Custmizing Firefox : Tips and Tricks

Here are some tips and tricks for Firefox users to customize their favorite browser.Check them out::
1.Keyboard shortcuts::These shortcuts will give you a better browsing experience

• Spacebar ->page down
• Shift + Spacebar ->page up
• Ctrl + F ->find
• Alt + N ->find next
• Ctrl + D ->bookmark page
• Ctrl + T ->new tab
• Ctrl + K ->go to search box.....

• Ctrl + L->go to address bar
• Ctrl + =/Ctrl + + ->increase text size
• Ctrl + -decrease text size
• Ctrl + 0->default text size
• Ctrl + W->close tab
• F5->reload
• Alt + Home->go to home page

2.Auto Complete::This is yet another feature of Firefox that is widely used. Go to address bar and write only the name of the site you want to open say for example Google and then press

• Control-Enter->(for "www.google.com")
• Shift-Enter->(for "www.google.net")
• Control-Shift-Enter->(for "www.google.org")

3. Tab navigation::

• Ctrl+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
• Ctrl+Shft+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
• Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)

4.Mouse shortcuts::

• Middle click on link (opens in new tab)
• Shift-scroll down (previous page)
• Shift-scroll up (next page)
• Ctrl-scroll up (decrease text size)
• Ctrl-scroll down (increase text size)
• Middle click on a tab (closes tab)

5. Smart keywords:: Right-click on the search box, select “Add a Keyword for this search”, give the keyword a name and an easy-to-type and easy-to-remember shortcut name (let’s say “actor”) and save it. Now, when you want to do an actor search, go to Firefox’s address bar, type “actor” and the name of the actor and press return. Instant search! You can do this with any search box.

6.Speed up Firefox with pipelining:: By default, pipelining is turned off in Firefox, but it's easy to turn it on:

• Type "about:config" into your address bar and hit Enter.
• In the Filter text box, at the top of the page, type network.http.A list of settings appears, as you can see in the nearby figure.
• Double-click the "network.http.pipelining" setting, to change it to true.
• Double-click the "network.http.proxy.pipelining" setting, to change it to true.
• Double-click the "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" setting, and in the text box that appears, type in 8 and click OK.
• Also, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
• Move or remove the close tab button:: Do you accidentally click on the close button of Firefox’s tabs? You can move them or remove them, again through "about:config". Edit the preference for “browser.tabs.closeButtons”. Here are the meanings of each value:

0: Display a close button on the active tab only
1:(Default) Display close buttons on all tabs
2:Don’t display any close buttons
3:Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar

8.Limit Firefox's use of RAM::Does Firefox use up too much of your RAM? Teach it to behave by limiting the amount of RAM it uses. To do it:

• Type about:config into your address bar and hit Enter.
• In the Filter text box, at the top of the page, type browser.cache.
• Double-click the "browser.cache.disk.capacity" entry.
• The default is 50000. If you don't have a lot of memory on your system, for example, between 512MB and 1GB, change the number to 15000 and click OK.

9.Personalize the Firefox interface by hacking userChrome.css:: In order to modify certain aspects of Firefox's chrome, you have to edit a file called userChrome.css stored in your Firefox profile directory. This file is user-specific and can be easily copied from one Firefox installation to another. Here's where your userChrome.css file is located, depending on your operating system:

Windows XP/2000

C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\chrome\
where xxxxxxxx is a random string of 8 characters.

Windows 95/98/Me

C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\chrome\

Linux

~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/chrome/

Mac OS X

~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/chrome/

Remove the Edit and Help menus

/* Remove the Edit and Help menus
Id's for all toplevel menus:
file-menu, edit-menu, view-menu, go-menu, bookmarks-menu, tools-menu, helpMenu */
#helpMenu, #edit-menu { display: none !important; }

Remove disabled back, forward and stop buttons

/* Remove Back button when there's nothing to go Back to */
#back-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* Remove Forward button when there's nothing to go Forward to */
#forward-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* Remove Stop button when there's nothing to Stop */
#stop-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }
/* Remove Home button */
#home-button { display: none; }

Remove the Go button

#go-button-stack, .search-go-button-stack {
display: none !important;
}

Remove the search bar magnifying glass

/*Remove magnifying glass button from search box*/
.search-go-button-stack { display: none !important; }

Remove the "throbber"

The "throbber" is the spinning dotted circle in the upper right hand corner of the Firefox.
/* Eliminate the throbber and its annoying movement: */
#throbber-box { display: none !important; }

There are a lot more of these kind of tricks available as it is infinitely customizable, via editing a text file called "userChrome.css", making changes via a command called "about:config", and using free add-ons to extend the features of the browser.If you know any trick worth sharing then do write a comment to this post.

Links::
ComputerWorld